In recent weeks, I have taken over Paul Browning's list of web editors. I have been working on making sure all the data is complete and accurate and a sad fact is emerging. A fair number of these editors have not been touched in two or more years and many are still in beta. On the other hand, I am getting lots of visits from people who are eager for this information, and the long list is mentioned as a reason.
But what is the point of a long list of editors if every visitor is going to get discouraged wading through to find discontinued products or moribound websites? Now, in some cases, such as that of Xinha, the product is still in beta, but it is high quality and being used and updated regularly. In a couple of cases, the code may not have been touched in a while, but it is solid. I hate to remove all mention of those products, partly because there are other people with web editor lists around, and if they include a product and I don't, I lose the opportunity to point out that that particular editor is going nowhere fast.
So what should I do? Should I sort by quality or relevance? Should I separate out the clunkers and put them in a separate list (even if it is on the same page)? How can I help people who visit my page looking for a good editor to find what they want? There are probably only five good open source products and fine or ten good commercial products, but if people see a list with fifteen items or fewer, will they know it is high quality or assume it is just incomplete?
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